A documentary film called Football Against the Wall has just be released, and premiered at the Bristol Palestine film festival in December, exploring how football can build connections between communities across the world. It follows the endeavours of Bristol-based radical sports team Easton Cowboys on their return to the West Bank in 2010 for a second time.
The film provides an insight into the realities of the occupation as seen by Palestinian and Israeli people. Will from the Easton Cowboys gives us his feedback about the tour itself:
Yes, it happened. At the beginning of May a group of fifteen Cowboys and Cowgirls ventured out again to the West Bank for another ten days of football (and volleyball), fun and falafel. There were a few differences to our last visit in April 2007. This time we mostly played in small villages, as opposed to the large centres of population like Bethlehem; we played in Israel itself, against the Anarchists Against the Wall group from Tel Aviv and we also had a more disparate group, made up of some old faces, a few new faces and a couple of our comrades from Republica.
It was as gruelling as last time – nine games in eight days – and everyone will have their own personal highlights. Who can forget our whistle stop VIP tour of Palestine’s leading fun fair, Megaland? Or our driver Shaher (aka ‘The General’) and his habit of inflicting the Backstreet Boys’ classic ‘Show Me The Reason For Being Lonely’ on us at regular intervals?
Then there was our final game in Traffur. As the tour bus wended its way down to the foot of the village where a floodlit stadium was carved out of a disused quarry, we were besieged by scores of kids. As we went in at half time all we could hear were hundreds of young voices, all chanting in unison ‘EASTON COW-BOYS’ None of us will ever forget it.
Along the way we learned a hell of a lot about the realities of the occupation. We also donated over £1000 to the building of a school in the community of Khallet Zakariya that is surrounded on all sides by illegal Israeli settlements. And we confirmed the Cowboys twinning arrangement with Tulkarem Sports Club. There is already talk of maybe getting a Palestinian side over here next year. Tim (Easton Cowboys)
Anybody who wants to show a public screening of the film contact the Cowboys via their website: http://eastoncowboys.org.uk/
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This article originally appeared in the January edition of Freedom newspaper see here
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